When the teacher becomes the student
by m-is-for-MollyMansfieldMealing
Summary: Connie's hectic lifestyle is causing her serious damage. With help from her colleagues, will she realise just how much it is affecting her before its too late? *tw- eating disorder* Just an idea I've had for a while, and it's a one-shot for now :)
1. Chapter 1

**Hello! Might continue this, I don't know yet. Please review if I you get chance! -Sophie x (PS- looking forward to Zoe's return tonight?)**

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><p>"Shit." Connie muttered, opening her eyes to the sound of her alarm incessantly buzzing. It had gone 9:30am, and she was due on shift in half an hour.<p>

She jumped in the shower as quickly as she could, then gathered her things together that had been scattered all over the living room. She never ate breakfast on a work day, and sometimes not on weekends either. A- there just wasn't the time, and B- she didn't want to put anymore weight on. The woman grabbed her house keys, slammed the door shut and sped off in her car.

This happened more often than you'd think for a professional woman like Connie Beauchamp. At least three mornings a week, she'd oversleep- this being a result of climbing into bed at 2 in the morning due to all the overtime that came with being clinical lead. She'd forget to turn her phone on loud and her alarm would simply vibrate rather than make any proper noise.

It was on these days that she'd be in an extra foul mood, snapping at her colleagues and being very sharp with patients. It was these days that Holby ED hated the most.

Connie parked her car and trotted into the ED as fast as her heels could carry her. This hectic lifestyle left her feet in agony most nights, after being contained in very high heels for sometimes up to 8 hours a day, then being forced to run for an hour after work. She dumped her coat and bags in her office then adjusted her hair in the mirror before going out onto the shop floor.

The clinical lead spent most of the morning in resus. She treat a woman with a serous spinal injury, a man who collapsed at work and started haemorrhaging, and sadly watched an elderly lady become a widow as she sobbed over her husbands lifeless body.

When it was time for her lunch break, the woman grabbed a small packet of biscuits from the department shop, dodging Honey's deluded declarations about her future. Honestly, "there's a bit of irony in store for you Mrs B. The teacher may soon become the student."? Really? Like anyone would believe that. She made her purchase and worked for the whole hour, stopping only to nibble on her biscuits.

Zoe poked her head around the door as Connie settled down and continued her departmental review she'd started the previous evening.

"Want anything getting for lunch?" She asked.

"No thanks." Connie said not bothering to look at her colleague but holding up her biscuits instead, and carried on writing.

"You can't have biscuits for your dinner." Zoe said, "that's ridiculous."

"Watch me Dr Hanna." She replied shortly, still writing.

Zoe sighed. "Fine, whatever. Have it your way. Don't blame me when you come in here as a patient, completely malnourished and underweight. You're looking very thin as it is."

"Good, I'd like to keep it that way. Now if you please, I'm busy." The clinical lead said, waving her hand towards the door and picking up another biscuit.

Zoe turned round and slammed the door shut. "Honestly..." Connie could hear her mutter as she walked away.

Who does she think she is? Connie thought, crumbling up the now empty wrapper and throwing it in the bin. It's none of her business what I do.

Once her lunch break was over, she cleared some cubicles and reluctantly took her reports up to Guy Self in his office. Connie knocked on his door and waited for an answer.

"Come in!" He called after a few minutes. Connie strode in to find him sat at his desk, feet up.

"Ah Constance, what can I do for you?" He asked, giving her a sleazy smile.

"Don't call me that." She said sharply, giving him an icy glare and throwing her papers onto his desk. "Departmental reports."

"Thankyou, and may I say just how beautiful you're looking today? I love the thinner woman-" He said, his gleaming eyes tracing the outline of her body.

"Ugh." She said, giving him a disgusted look before walking out, making sure to slam his door as hard as she could for good measure. He's a complete and utter slimeball that man, Connie thought, making eyes at every woman he meets...

Somehow she made it to 6pm and clocked off, driving home to get changed into her running clothes. She went for an hours run every evening after work. It helped her to relax and unwind after the usually stressful day she had. Connie got changed, plugged in her earphones and set off, making her way to the park, round the lake and back again.

However, when she got to the lake she started to feel lightheaded. The water span infront of her eyes and she stopped, reaching out to hold onto one of the tree trunks that were growing at the side of the water. "It's probably the heat." She muttered to herself. It was a warm summers evening as Holby were in the middle of a severe heat wave, and had been for the past week. However, Connie had been fine with the heat up until now, so what had changed?

She felt her surroundings jolt again and she was filled with nausea. She held onto the bark as she vomited into the water, eyes streaming with both shock and fear. She was a doctor, she knew something was wrong. The woman tried to move but her vision became fuzzy and her mind became cloudy. She felt herself losing consciousness. The last thing she remembered was fumbling for her phone in her pocket and the sensation of falling, before she blacked out completely.

"Dix?" Jeff called, "Dix it's Connie!" He ran over to where a group of people were crowded by the waters edge.

"Ok can you all move away please." Dixie shouted as she ran over. Connie lay unconscious on the grass, soaked to the skin. A man was crouched next to her, also very damp.

"I saw fall so I rescue her." The man said with a strong foreign accent.

"Ok, thanks mate." Jeff grinned as he led him to the ambulance to be checked over. Dixie stayed with Connie.

"Ok Connie, can you hear me?" She said, checking her breathing and pulse. Her heart plummeted.

"Jeff? I'm losing her pulse very rapidly darlin, we need to get her back to the ED now!" She shouted. Jeff ran over with the trolley, leaving the man next to the vehicle in a blanket. Together, the two got her onto the trolley and got her into the ambulance as quickly as possible, along with the man that found her.

They sped off, lights and sirens blazing. Dixie had hooked her up the heart monitor as soon as they got her into the ambulance, but then it started to go off.

"Jeff step on it love, we're losing her!" She shouted urgently, and Jeff put his foot down. Dixie ripped open Connie's top and started CPR, doing mouth to mouth after each lot of compressions. She was still pumping her chest when Jeff pulled up outside the ED and Charlie and Zoe came running out.

"Right this is Connie Beauchamp, 34, fell into the lake at the park. Signs of vomiting beforehand. Lost her pulse en route and Dix's been performing CPR for the past 20 minutes." Jeff reeled off as they sped into resus. Dixie brought the man in and took him to Robyn who led him to cubicles.

Zoe got the defibrillator and placed the pads on Connie's chest.

"Stand back everyone." She said, "charging... Shocking." The electricity ran through the clinical lead's body but there was nothing.

"Trying again. Shocking." Again the electricity ran through her lifeless body, but it didn't work.

"Still no output. And again." Zoe said, charging the machine.

"Come on Connie." She whispered, watching as her body was shocked again, and jolted back to life.

"We have an output!" Charlie announced, and he clapped Zoe and Dixie on the back. "Well done you two."

"No problem." They said simultaneously, and Zoe started to sort out Connie.

"Right, a litre of saline please and can we check for any signs of spinal or head injury. Charlie can you book a CT scan please, and I'll do bloods, A's and E's." She said before going to the woman's side with her needle. Once she'd drawn enough blood, she sent it off (labelled as urgent) to be analysed.

An hour later, Connie awoke to find herself not at the park, or at home, but at work again, though this time she was on the bed instead of stood round it. Feeling a little confused, she pressed the call button on the wall next to her and watched as Zoe made her way to her side.

"Ah, you're finally awake." She smiled, checking her monitor screen. "How are you feeling?"

"Brilliant." She said dryly. "What do you think. Please no sweet talking me Zoe, why am I here."

"You blacked out at the park and fell into the water. A man spotted you and dragged you back onto the grass and called you an ambulance." Zoe explained, noting something down on her clipboard.

"Great. That explains why I reek of dirty water." Connie muttered, smelling her hair and flicking it out of the way.

"Connie, I've ran some tests on you and confirmed what I originally thought." Zoe said, coming to sit beside her. "You're massively underweight for your age and height. You're slightly malnourished, very dehydrated and severely anaemic. You also have low levels of vitamins in your bloodstream."

"I'm what?" Connie spluttered, "severely anaemic? Zoe I think if I was then I'd have noticed by now."

"Evidently not. Look." She showed her patient the results sheet for her tests. Connie snatched it off of her and ran her eyes over the writing that confirmed what Zoe had said. Silently, she handed her the sheet back.

"I was wondering if you would tell me what you usually had for breakfast, dinner and tea on an average day?" Zoe said, looking at her.

"Don't have breakfast, never have the time. Dinners usually a light snack on weekdays or just a sandwich at weekends. Tea can be anything from nothing at all to a very small ready meal." She said, her voice monotonous.

"What about exercise?"

"Go for an hours run every day after work."

"Ok, thankyou. Well, you're probably expecting the whole lecture on eating right so I won't give it to you. What I will give to you though are two things. One, some iron tablets- take them twice a day for two weeks then once a day after that for the foreseeable future. The other thing is this." Zoe reached into her pocket and pulled out a leaflet. She handed it to Connie who looked at it and laughed.

"Zoe, I don't have an eating disorder." She said, raising her eyebrow, "And I certainly don't need to go on an eating plan."

"Yes you do Connie and it's going to take you a while to realise that. But you need to start eating properly. Going to an eating disorder clinic and talking about it will help you with this."

"It won't help me because I don't need any help!" Connie said angrily, her voice rising. "It's none of your business what I eat or how I live my life."

"It is when you came in clinically dead!" Zoe shouted back, her temper rising. This comment shocked Connie into silence and she stared at her, wide eyed.

"Yeah, you heard me right!" Zoe went on, glaring at her. "Dixie and Jeff were called to you and on the way back, Dixie lost your pulse. She performed CPR for 20 minutes before you got here and I could use the defibrillator to shock you back to life." The doctor sighed.

"What you're doing to yourself is literally killing you Connie, and you don't even realise it." She said softly. Connie had tears in her eyes that she blinked back rapidly. Handing her a tissue, Zoe went on.

"With some help from this clinic and us of course, you can stop this from happening again. I promise I'm not trying to get at you, I'm just very concerned for your welfare. If you refuse to go to the clinic or go on an eating plan then I will inform your doctor and the authorities because I've seen this happen to so many people Connie, and I don't want it to happen to you too. Because I know how damaging it can really be in the long run, and I'm sure you do too." She finished. Connie was wiping away the mascara marks the tears had left down her cheeks.

"Ok." She said quietly. "Ok. I'll try out the clinic and I'll try to eat better. I promise."

"That's what I like to hear boss. I'll leave you to rest and I'll be back in an hour. Call me if you need anything."

"Thanks." She said gratefully, "oh and Zoe?" The woman turned around from the door.

"Don't call me boss."

"You gotcha." Zoe winked and shut her door.

Connie was left alone and to her own thoughts. Being in hospital always bored her, even when she had Grace she felt useless. She let her fingers wander down her body, feeling the jut of bones in every possible place. The clinical lead had no idea just how thin she'd become. Her hips stuck out at an alarming rate, and she could feel her ribs scarily easily.

Shocked, the woman out her hand to her mouth to contain the sobs that were escaping. Connie stayed like that for a while, mulling things over and crying until there were no more tears left to shed. Then, she was interrupted by a knock at the door.

"Who is it?" She called, wiping her eyes. In walked the man that rescued her, but she didn't know that.

"Hello. I am Gustav, I save you at park." He smiled, "can I enter?"

"Why not." Connie sighed, "yes."

He came in gratefully and shut the door before coming to stand by her bed.

"I bring this, as good luck for getting better." Gustav said, handing her a beaded bracelet. She took it and looked at it curiously.

"At home, these powerful. They help sick be better." He tried to explain, getting irritated at his own lack of English and inability to communicate properly. Connie noticed this, and she was touched he thought of her. She put her hand over his and said "Thank you. Thank you so much."

"You is welcome." He replied, sitting down as Connie motioned towards the chair. "I apologise for lack of English. I only arrive here 2 months ago."

"It's ok, Gustav." She smiled. "Let me introduce myself too. I'm Connie Beauchamp."

"Cone-ie Beechoom?" He said, trying to repeat her pronunciation.

"Near enough." Connie said, causing him to smile. They chatted for a while which helped Connie's boredom at being confined to her hospital bed. When it was time for him to leave , he stood up and looked at her seriously.

"Please try be better." He said, "you are too beautiful and kind to be ill."

"I promise I will try, Gustav." She smiled, feeling tears prick her eyes again. "I will try."

The man left and she tried to get some sleep, suddenly overcome with fatigue. Today has been an eventful day she thought to herself, feeling the comforting blanket of sleep drift over her. And I hope it will only get better from now on.


	2. Chapter 2

It was 2 months after Connie had collapsed at the park, and she was now on an eating plan to help her regain healthiness.

Most of her meals consisted of a meat, some form of potatoes and veg (good job she's not vegetarian) which didn't seem too bad. They were small portions at first, but then they increased to normal, adult size plates. Connie was also taking vitamin and mineral tablets which made her look much healthier; there was now a sort of glow about her rather than the pale pallor she had originally. Her hair was thicker and glossier, and her eyes sparkled much more.

She now ate breakfast every day, even if was only some porridge like biscuits or a breakfast bar. On this particular morning, she opted for some chocolate Belvita's (a personal favourite of hers) before driving into work.

An hour after she arrived, Connie was called to an RTC that was going to resus.

"Okay Dix, who have we got?" She said, snapping on some rubber gloves as Dixie wheeled a blood soaked man into resus.

"This is Gustavros Schanders, 48, crashed into a lamppost at around 30mph. He was knocked unconscious and hasn't come round yet." She replied, then reeled off his sats, bloods and bp. They wheeled him into a space and cut off his shirt as Connie started her assessment.

"Right, deep laceration to the chest area and bruising to the lower abdomen. Head wound seems to be a laceration to the forehead above the left eye. She lifted his eyelids and shone her light across them. Once she'd finished, she asked Robyn to call CT and stayed to make sure Lofty cleaned him up properly. As the nurse started to dab at his head, the man's eyes fluttered open.

"Where… Where…" he mumbled, shifting where he lay.

"Mr Schanders, you've been involved in a car accident. You're in Holby ED."

He peered up at her and broke into a smile.

"Cone-ie Beechoom!" he exclaimed, making Connie raise her eyebrows in surprise.

"I'm sorry?"

"Cone-ie! You fell in lake!" He smiled, proffering his hand.

It was then that she realised. This was the man who had rescued her when she collapsed in the lake a couple of months ago! He came to see her afterwards and they had got on really well.

"Gustav!" She broke into a smile before shaking his hand. "It's lovely to see you again! Not like this obviously-" she said hastily but he just laughed.

"It is ok, it is ok." He smiled.

"Lofty-" Connie looked down at him, "let me tidy him up. You go."

"If you're sure?" he said uncertainly. Cleaning blood wasn't a job for doctors, never mind consultants.

"Yes I'm sure." She said, voice full of warning. He put his hands up in defeat and walked out.

"Are you better? You look more healthy." He said, looking into her eyes as she started to clean his head wound gently.

"I am. I'm getting there anyway." She replied quietly.

"Good." He nodded, "you are too beautiful to be wasted on illness."

"Thankyou." Connie whispered. She felt her cheeks flushing and hands shake slightly as she cleaned up his face and started on his chest. They chatted until she had finished and stood up. The clinical lead took off her gloves and went to sit by his bed again.

"Tell me about you Gustav." She said, smiling at him. "Where are you from? Do you have any family here?"

The man sighed sadly as he turned to face her and began to talk.

"I was born and raised in Slovakia, all my life. I loved it- I lived with my girlfriend, Aanya and dog that we named Salia. But then I lose my job and we become poor. I could not give for Aanya and Salia so I come here- to England- where I have opportuneetees. Aanya was going to come with me, but she said it was a too big change so she didn't. She kept Salia, and now I have nobody." He said sadly. Connie sat silent, moving her hand so it rested gently on his.

"I'm so sorry." She whispered.

"It is ok. I have flat and job as builder so it is not all bad." Gustav attempted to smile. "Still no lady friend though."

"That's a shame, you're such a sweet guy." Connie smiled, squeezing his hand and getting up. "I need to get my dinner- I'm not allowed to miss it anymore."

"No you are not." He smiled. "Will you come back?"

"Of course." She smiled. "For now, Gustav."

"For now, Cone-ie." He repeated after her and smiled broadly.

"No, repeat after me- Con-nie." She said slowly.

"Cone-nie." He replied, mumbling.

"Practise." She smiled before leaving.

That afternoon, Gustav was transferred to Holby's Keller ward to be kept under observation for his abdomen.

Once Connie clocked off for the day, she went up to visit him.

"Mrs Beauchamp?" It was Fletch. "Lovely to see you again! How can I help ya?"

"Oh, hello Fletch! I'm here to see a patient, a Mr Schanders?" She asked.

"I know where he is, come with me." Fletch smiled as he lead Connie to Gustav's bed. He pulled back the curtain to find the cubicle completely empty.

"Uh- one sec." Fletch said. Connie waited as he found out what had happened.

"Connie!" Fletch returned holding a sheet of paper. "Turns out he had an internal bleed- abdo I think, so he's in emergency surgery. He wrote this and said to give it to you."

Fletch handed her the paper. She unfolded it and read the surprisingly neat handwriting;

"Connie, I want to know if you would maybe like to go for a drink? When I am better of course, but I really like you very much, and would love to get know you better.

Love, Gustav xx"

Connie smiled as she read, shielding it from Fletch who kept looking at it over her shoulder.

"Ooh, got a fella Mrs B?" he winked.

"Fletch?" she asked sweetly. "Don't call me that. And I believe that is none of your business."

"Fair enough. Before you go-" he said, grabbing her arm as she turned to leave. "How's Tess doing?"

"Again, none of your business. But she's doing well." Connie said monotonously.

"Good, good. See you later Mrs Beauchamp."

"Goodbye, Fletch. Send me a message once Gustav is out of surgery please."

"I will." He promised before watching her go back to the life he once knew.

Connie waited anxiously for Gustav to regain his strength, those few weeks after his emergency operation. She came to really care for the man, love him even. He always knew how to make her laugh and cheer her up if she had a bad shift. He also took interest in her; her day, her thoughts her moans- he loved all of it.

Slowly but surely, they were falling for each other, whether they knew it or not.


End file.
